I'm not the world, I just live in it. It might be a mess, but that mess mostly doesn't affect me. The few ways in which it does can be effectively mitigated by anyone who puts in even the tiniest bit of effort.

For that matter, nothing much stops me from carving out my own little world where I can clean up what mess it is, and live there. But to do that I'd have to admit to myself that I can't change the greater world and even acknowledge that there's no real point in wanting that other than to chase high status among our monkey tribe.

> But to do that I'd have to admit to myself that I can't change the greater world

Do you though? Can't we believe that change is possible, but also choose not to act on it? Not saying that's right or wrong, just that it's possible.

hard disagree. I think you can be happy about some things and not about others, and it's not so black-and-white.

Replace 'happy' with 'neurotic' and you got it!